


far back in my memory (i hear your words)

by gillywulf



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, F/F, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 21:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5943970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gillywulf/pseuds/gillywulf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the end of the world comes, you’re wrapped around the love of your life and you’ve made peace with death.</p><p>Or</p><p>People had lives before the bombs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	far back in my memory (i hear your words)

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Control by Kevin Garrett

The ground is harsher than you thought. Between lake monsters, members of the 100, and a totally unforeseen population of people, it’s less than all your teachers cracked it up to be. It’s hard staying alive most days, but sometimes you catch sight of the sun through the trees or catch the smell of roasting meat and you think it might grow on you.

“I dreamed it would smell like this” Raven says with the widest grin you’ve ever seen a person have and outstretched arms. You look at the trees again and smile yourself.

Harsh was still livable.

~

The first time you’d met Lexa, she was sick and miserable. She was wearing the comfiest sweatshirt she owned (it became your favorite thing to sleep in) and sweatpants as she sat in the waiting room of the clinic your mom ran. She looked at you with wide eyes and a nervous smile. She was too adorable to ignore.

You were only intending to drop off the lunch you mom had forgotten and Lexa was only intending to get a prescription, but somehow the two of you ended up talking in the uncomfortable plastic chairs for two hours.

Your mother could only stall for so long.

By the time you left, she had your number and you had the promise of a date once she’d gotten healthy.

~

The first time you hear the words ‘the Commander’, you’re chained to rocks and staring at a terrifyingly large man. Anya called him Tristan and she looks at him with the tiniest bit of hurt when she asks “The Commander sent you?” It’s not until later when you realize what Lexa and Anya are to each other how much it hurt her. But Lexa is the Commander and she makes decisions with her head, not her heart.

You don’t think about who she is or what she represents. There’s no time. Two separate people march toward you with knives and one succeeds in knocking you out. The Commander is a distant thought.

~

While sick was not a good look on Lexa, that leather jacket and those skinny jeans certainly were. It was stupid to be surprised by it, but you couldn’t help it, she was _gorgeous_. Her smile was no less nervous as she held open the door to the restaurant for you.

She spends the whole night dazzling you. She’s funny and brilliant and a good listener and you really can’t look away from her for more than a few seconds. Her eyes dance and shine as her eyes never seem to leave you.

The mini golf is another surprise and you almost burst out laughing when you see it. What kind of adults go mini golfing for a first date? And yet, you will state year after year that it was the best date you’ve ever been on. It’s obvious how competitive she is, but she tries to tone it down. She’s deliberately silly and touchy and _god_ do you love it. You win.

At the end of the night, you’re vibrating with excitement. You want to kiss her. More than you’ve ever wanted to kiss anyone before. It seems she has the same idea when she takes your hand at your doorstep and leans in close.

“So, usually at the end of really good dates you kiss goodnight” she mumbles into the air between you. You fight the grin growing on your cheeks and laugh.

“Yeah?” You nudge your nose against hers.

“Usually, yeah”

“Well alright then” She tastes like strawberries.

~

Kane swears up and down the moment he steps into Camp Jaha that the Commander can be reasoned with. Privately, you don’t have much faith, but you know it _may_ be your best shot, so you decide to meet her. Every step you take towards her tent feels like a knife in your spine.

Just before the tent flaps open, you think about how you got there. How did you become the leader of your people? Why are you the one they are all relying on? It doesn’t really matter. Someone has to do it and you know you can. You might even prefer it at some points.

But you were never prepared for the sight of a beautiful girl sitting in a terrifying chair. She plays with her knife, completely unconcerned with you as she speaks.

“You're the one who burned three hundred of my warriors alive” she states calmly. You wonder how, as killing three hundred people was not a calm thing for you to do. Not even weeks later.

“You're the one who sent them there to kill us“ The words slip out before you can stop them and only then does she look at you. Her eyes are a stunning green, easily standing out from her warpaint. She stands from her throne, all stiff posture and intimidating presence but you ignore all of that in favor of her exposed chest and prominent jaw.

“Do you have an answer for me, Clarke of the Sky People?” You’re gone from the moment she says your name.

~

Octavia gives Lexa the most intense stare down that she’s ever given anyone you’ve dated. She’s horribly protective of you - all of your friends are - but you have to admit it’s a little over the top, especially when she leans in so close that she could probably kiss your girlfriend with no problem at all. With a roll of your eyes, you tug Lexa’s hand and drag her over to where Bellamy is still grilling hamburgers.

The day is absolutely perfect. No rain all week and temperatures in the high seventies. Raven is busy impressing like, five people with her engineering knowledge and Bellamy has been itching to use his grill all summer. Your friends love to show off.

You settle into a lawn chair and Lexa settles against you with ease. She’s a warm weight and you know your friends are going to love her. Harper had met her by accident a week ago and assured you of that. You know it anyway, but it’s nice to have a second opinion.

“Is there anything I need to remember in regards to anyone?” she asks softly. She’s been nervous about meeting your friends since you brought it up, but she loves you (she hasn’t said it yet, but you catch her looking at you when you’re trying to watch TV and that’s really the only reason someone would look at you that way), so she sucked in a deep breath and followed you to your car. You know she’ll get lucky later.

“No,” you press a kiss to her shoulder, “just be your charming self” She laughs as if it’s a joke, but she knows how much attention you pay to her social anxiety and she twists to land a kiss on your temple.

“Look, they’re already being cute!” Sometimes you could really slap Jasper.

~

Finn is dead. Completely and entirely. By your hand.

Yes, you told him you loved him - and you might have given time - but it was what he needed to let go. You’re still waiting for something to let you do the same.

A pyre is set up in the town center and Finn’s body is laid among those he killed. You stare at the canvases and think of art. You never had canvas on the Ark. painting would have been so much easier-

“Clarke” The Commander is holding a torch out to you and it’s fairly obvious what she wants you to do. You hesitate, but you take it and stand beside her. You’re almost sure she says something else, but you can’t focus on it. Not with Finn staring at you. His hand rests on yours and helps you lower the flame to the pyre.

“Yu gonplei ste odon” The words are out of your mouth before you really register them, but they’re right. You catch the Commander gaping at you from the corner of your eye. Her green eyes are bright with surprise and intrigue as flame flickers in the corners of them. You can’t look.

Hours later the flames burn out and the Commander is still beside you.

“I lost someone special to me, too. Her name was Costia. She was captured by the Ice Nation, whose queen believed she knew my secrets. Because she was mine. They tortured her, killed her, cut off her head” Of all the things you might have expected her to say, that was not it.

“I'm sorry" you murmur.

“I thought I'd never get over the pain, but I did" She’s trying to be comforting. Her clenching jaw is proving that it may not be working.

“How?”

“By recognizing it for what it is, weakness"

“What is? Love? So you just stopped caring about everyone? I could never do that" The idea is appealing of course, no more attachments to vulnerable people? But then who would save them? Certainly not your parents who sent you to the ground in the first place. They had accepted your deaths long ago.

“Then you put the people you care about in danger, and the pain will never go away. The dead are gone, Clarke. The living are hungry" She turns and marches away without another word.

~

You have been watching Lexa talk to your mom for five minutes, her hands constantly catching themselves before she could gesticulate too much. She loves talking about current events - and there’s been a lot to talk about lately - and your mother knows enough to have a conversation but you barely notice her.

All of your attention is on your girlfriend. There are things stuck in your throat that you don’t know how to say. You already tell her those three words at every available opportunity, waking up, breakfast, heading out to work, over texts, coming home, dinner, after sex, falling asleep, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

You want to crawl under her skin and live in her bones. You want to take up residence beside her organs and feel the steady beat of her heart in your ears constantly. You don’t think there’s a word for that.

Instead of trying, you dart across the room and interrupt the conversation with an apologetic look towards your mom. Lexa follows as she always does and grins at you when you find a people-less room. Parties are hard to be horny at.

She takes your face in her hands and kisses you like she knows about your intentions to live in her body. The words slip out before you can over think them.

“Move in with me” you breathe against her collarbones. Her hands pause against your skin and you fear for a moment that a year wasn’t long enough for her. But her lips are on your yours before you can think too much and she has to break the kiss because she’s smiling too hard.

“Yes, absolutely, _yes_ ” You think maybe there’s enough space in her for both of you.

~

The air is thick and hot when you enter Lexa’s tent for the second time that day. She’s not even looking at you so you have hope that maybe your backing her into a table earlier got the message across (you push the thought of what it all _meant_ away, no romance until after everyone is out of the mountain).

“You sent for me?” You watch her hands as she releases the papers and turns towards you.

“Yes. Octavia has nothing to fear from me. I do trust you, Clarke” The admission makes you stand up straighter. Trust from her is imperative and impossible to gain. But here she is, standing straight and tall, telling you that you are an exception.

“I know how hard that is for you” you say as you step closer. You want to see her green eyes a little closer, though you’d never say that out loud.

“You think our ways are harsh, but it’s how we survive”

“Maybe life should be about more than just surviving. Don’t we deserve better than that?” Her eyes are too intense and you have to look away. The maps look like a good idea. They’re essentially artwork and the artist in you is itching to see more.

“Maybe we do” And then she kisses you.

~

When you come home from work Lexa is staring at the TV more intently than you’ve seen her look at anything in your life. Her feet are drawn up into her chest and her eyebrows are furrowed and you know she must be gnashing her teeth. You pause after setting down your keys.

“Lex? You okay?” Your voice startles her and she jumps before turning to gape at you. She’s off the couch and in front of you in a blink.

“Clarke, do you know what to do if you hear sirens?” She takes your hands with an unparalleled seriousness.

“Like police or fire-”

“No, those big sirens at the end of Maple. On top of the telephone pole” You're confused and shake your head.

“No”

“If you ever hear them, I need you to get to the bank as fast as possible. It has a bomb shelter and our house won’t stand up to anything. If we want a chance, _that’s_ where you go. Okay?” she explains, but it still doesn’t make sense.

“Okay, but I don’t understand-”

“You know the sirens that the fire company tests every first Sunday of every month? The one you always complains wakes you up even though it’s at noon at you should already be awake? Don’t hesitate. Whether I’m there or not, go. You’ll have five minutes warning, I think” She’s begging with you. You’re scared now, so you bury your fingers in her hair and press your foreheads together.

“Not without you” She turns the contact into an embrace.

“ _Please_ , don’t think about me”

“I always think about you”

~

Three months should be long enough. But somehow it isn’t.

Lexa looks like an angel - or more accurately, a god - with light as a backdrop. The room fades easily to the background as she growls at Roan and orders everyone. She’s in her own environment and she looks _powerful_. But when she steps into your space and says “I’m sorry” she’s just a girl again. A girl on your level.

You spit, you scream, you struggle, and yet, she still gives you space for much longer than you anticipated. But then again, has she ever actually forced you into something you didn’t want? Maybe coming to Polis, but you think you might have ended up there anyway.

She looks regal and put together standing in the middle of the room they dumped you in. She has a way of doing that and you really wish you didn’t notice so quickly.

“I want your people to become my people” she says. Your heart stops for a moment. Logically, it’s a dream come true. It means that there will be no more obvious adversaries in humans. Any person you meet should treat your people as one of their own.

It doesn’t help that when she says it, you picture how she looked just before she kissed you. A joining.

But you’re done. You deliberately walked away from leadership months ago. If she wanted that, she should have lead with it back before Mount Weather. In her defense, you weren’t Wanheda then. You didn’t have the highest bounty in the world on your head.

“Go float yourself”

~

You have been planning for months to propose at your surprise mini golf date tonight. It’s where you fell in love with her, it’s where you want to promise to be in love with her for the rest of your life. You think maybe you’ll even let her win this time.

But when you wake up that morning, she’s already up, watching you serenely and tracing the constellation tattoo on your hip. It’s the first time in weeks you’ve seen her so carefree and like every other important question you’ve asked her, this one slips out.

“Will you marry me?” Her fingers stop and her eyes find yours and go wide.

“I thought you were planning on asking tonight!” she says, but her lips are already stretching into a ridiculous grin.

“How did you know I was asking tonight?” you shoot back, pulling her closer. She kisses your chin and then your cheek in between giggles.

“Don’t tell Octavia things like that. She gets too excited and can’t keep it a secret” You feel a flash of anger with your best friend for spoiling the surprise, but you really should have known better (she had meant to keep her pregnancy quiet for another week, but she’d managed to tell all of your friends merely an hour after her first doctor’s appointment via a text she meant to send to her parents) and it didn’t really matter. You still managed to surprise her.

“I haven’t actually been given a response yet” you tease. This time she kisses you squarely on the mouth. Her lips shaped perfectly to fit yours.

“Yes. I would love to marry you” You think that you’ve never been so happy. Not when you got into your top choice college, not when your dad brought home a tiny puppy when you were in fourth grade, not when you’d gotten your first phone call from your _fiance_.

You’re lying in bed with a woman who loves you more than anything, in a house that you bought together, as you promise eternity to each other in soft touches and radiant kisses.

You get to be this happy for the rest of your life.

~

It seems as if all you and Lexa ever do is get trapped in tight places together while something tries to kill you. First, the pauna, now Ice Nation warriors. The small bunker you found yourselves in was barely large enough to fit the two of you, but that was okay. The past two weeks had been a major lesson in moving on, especially from past transgressions.

You know that you look at Lexa differently than when you first came to Polis. You think that maybe you look at her like she looks at you, like she’s _always_ looked at you. She is a steady presence in your life. She is always at your side or in front of you, ready to defend. You don’t mind being pressed shoulder to shoulder in a place where you can’t even stand.

“Get some rest” she suggests quietly. She pulls out her knife and a rag to clean it, but you know her attention is firmly outside the bunker, listening for any noise, however minute.

“So you can watch over me in my sleep again?” you tease. She tosses you a glance and fights a smile. At her silence, you lean further against her and rest your head against her shoulder. You feel her stiffen beneath you before adjusting the slightest amount to better accommodate you.

The danger outside is still too present for you to really get any sleep, so you watch Lexa’s steady hands clean off her knife instead. The slowing of her heart rate in your ear shows that the repetitive slow motions are therapeutic for her. She leans more into you with each passing minute.

“Lexa” you mumble. As you raise your head to look her in the eye, she turns her head to do the same and your nose brushes first against her cheek and then her nose and you both pause, far too close. You’re sure that her previously calm heartbeat is skyrocketing now, only because yours is doing the same.

“Yes?” Whatever you’d been planning on asking was gone. Lexa is everywhere, in all of your senses. She’s beautiful, and strong, and she _loves_ you.

So you kiss her.

~

The wedding magazine earns another sharpie circle in it when a deafening alarm sounds down the street. You drop the sharpie in shock and you know it’s definitely made a mark on your hardwood floors, but you’re already out of the chair and running towards your shoes. You’ve got one on and the other in your hand when you freeze.

Your car is in the shop. The neighbors are all on vacation. You have no way to get to the bank in time. Flat out running would take definitely more than five minutes.

You are going to die.

A shrill ringing interrupts your revelation and you whip your phone from your pocket to see a picture of Lexa pressing a kiss to your cheek. You swipe and press it to your ear.

“Lexa”

“ _Clarke_ ” She must have remembered the same things you did because her voice is cracking. “I can make it to you and we can make it to the bank, we can survive this-” You’re already shaking your head. Your shoe has dropped from your hand and you collapse against the doorframe.

“The freeway exit is between us and the bank. You have to choose, babe. Go to the bank” Lexa must take the phone from her ear because the sob that follows isn’t made into the receiver.

“I was going to marry you” she says finally. You fall to the floor and cry.

“I know. I couldn’t wait” Your eyes take in the house around you. There on the wall is a group photo of the two of you with all of your friends. On the kitchen table is the glass of water Lexa had forgotten to stick in the sink before she went out for her errands. The coffee table in the den is covered in wedding magazines. Lexa hates them. She wants to do something original.

“I’m choosing, Clarke” she says and your heart shatters. She told you not to come for her. You feel the same.

“I love you” she whisper.

“I love you too. _So_ much” Someone hangs up - you don’t have the presence of mind to know who - and you open the camera roll on your phone. A picture of the dog the two of you were thinking about adopting, Lexa just waking up, Lexa making breakfast, you kissing Lexa within an inch of her life, Octavia and the baby, Lincoln grinning and proud and tired, your mom posing with your dad.

Some bomb is going to come down and destroy everything. Big bombs. You wonder what the world will look like after this. The earth will reclaim all of your roads and buildings. Animals will die. Maybe people will survive. Maybe space was the answer all along.

A car speeds into your driveway and there isn’t even a door slam when your front door opens and Lexa bursts through, tears streaking down her face.

“Lexa, _no_ ” you beg, shooting up to your feet and engulfing her in the tightest hug imaginable. She buries her face in your neck.

“A world without you in it is not worth living to me” You pull back and bring her into a kiss.

“You are so stupid” Her laugh is almost gurgling behind her tears but she kisses you again anyway.

“That was my hoodie” You look down and it’s the one you first saw her in. You laugh too. When the end of the world comes, you’re wrapped around the love of your life and you’ve made peace with death. 

~

It all feels very familiar when you’re walking into a room crowded with people dressed to the nines with Lexa waiting for you at the other end, dressed just as nice. The first time was a vow, same as this, only this is not political - some still think it is - but this is heart, not head.

A woman is singing the anthem you’ve come to know and love in the corner and you can see Lexa’s rapid breathing. She’s as excited as you. You finally stand next to her and her eyes are shining and she’s trying not to smile as large as she wants to. You don’t have any qualms about that, your smile is bigger than any you’ve had on the ground. Titus clears his throat in front of the two of you and starts speaking in Trigedasleng.

Slim fingers tangle in your own. Lexa says some words (her real vow was almost a year ago on her knees before you, this was a formality as far as you were concerned), you say some words and you kiss. Marcus cheers the loudest and you can’t help but laugh.

His relationship with your mom is still weird to you, but he really has become a father figure to many of the 100, including you. It’s not until you’re in private with Lexa that she grins, all childish happiness and excitement.

“You are my houmon” she giggles and it’s a great sound. You hum and laugh.

“As you are mine. Does that feel weird?” You kiss her jaw.

“No. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to marry you” You nod and pull her into a hug. You feel the same.


End file.
